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Child Prostitution in Tanzania

In Tanzania, the ages of child prostitutes we encounter range from 13 to 17 years old however many girls enter the industry even younger. They enter as street children from 5 to 12 years old sometimes being abused or forced into prostitution by people who are employing them.

Parental Advice

In today's world being a teenager -- or the parents of a teenager -- is often complicated, always challenging and repeatedly filled with unforeseen and unrecognized hazards. Teens today are faced with an enormity of lifestyle decisions that will impact them for the rest of their lives. As parents, we should be in a position to offer them advice and counsel that will keep them safe.

10 Reasons for not legalizing Prostitution

Janice Raymond,2003
Courtesy of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women

Legalizing/decriminalization of prostitution is a gift to pimps, traffickers and the sex industry

Legalizing/decriminalization of prostitution and the sex industry promotes sex trafficking

Legalization/decriminalization of prostitution does not control the sex industry. It expands it.

Legalization of prostitution and decriminalization of the sex industry increases child prostitution

Legalization/decriminalization of prostitution does not protect the women in prostitution

Legalization/decriminalization of prostitution increases the demand for prostitution. It encourages men to buy women for sex in a wider and more permissible range of socially acceptable settings

Legalization/decriminalization of prostitution does not promote women’s health.

Legalization/decriminalization of prostitution does not enhance women’s choice

Women in systems of prostitution do not want the sex industry legalized or decriminalized.

A Human Rights Legal Alternative: Penalizing the Demand

There is no evidence that legalization of prostitution makes things better for women in prostitution. It makes things better for government who legalize prostitution and for the sex industry, both of which enjoy increased revenues. The popular fiction that all will be well in the world of prostitution once the sex industry is legalized/decriminalized is repudiated by evidence that the harm, abuse and violence to women still remain in state-sponsored prostitution.

State sponsored prostitution sanitizes and normalizes the realities of prostitution

Dirty money becomes clean

Illegal acts become legal

Pimps are transformed into legitimate businessmen and entrepreneurs

Men who would not consider buying a woman in prostitution are encouraged by legalization/decriminaization

International laws guiding women against prostitution

Prostitution violates women’s human rights

Prostitution is violence against women and violates the most basic human rights to sexual autonomy and integrity.

The human rights of women everywhere are seriously threatened by the massive and growing exploitation of women.

The Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others 1949 declares prostitution and the accompanying evil of trafficking for prostitution, to be incompatible with the dignity and worth of every human being

CEDAW – The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women was adopted in 1979 and ratified by nation states beginning in 1980. Ireland ratified in 1985. The most authoritative U.N. human rights instrument to protect women from abuse and discrimination.

The Vienna Declaration 1993, in Article 1, defines as violence against women,

‘any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life’.

N. Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women 1993 targets

‘Physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring within the general community, including rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and intimidation at work, in educational institutions and elsewhere, trafficking in women and forced prostitution (Article 2 b)

CATW (Coalition Against Trafficking in Women) has proposed a new Convention Against All Forms of Sexual Exploitation to the U.N. as a targeted instrument to address the expanding and globalising sex trade.